ST. GALLEN.- The Lokremise in St. Gallen recently gained a new landmark: since 23 October 2014, the three projections A Piece of Urban Landscape by Michel Verjux have been on display and cast the Lokremise, the Badhaus, and the Water Tower by Robert Maillart (1872–1940) in a new light within the urban landscape. With the artist’s wife, the author Isabelle Lartault (born 1960 in Chalon-sur-Saône), this exhibition is now being continued in the art section of the Lokremise in a fascinating discourse with Michel Verjux.

Lartault came to fame in France with the book Les Grandes Occasions 1980–2000 (Les Archives modernes, Dijon, 2000), in which a Christmas story with a lovely cadence apparently repeats year after year, with slight changes: in 1980, among many other wonderful gifts, the characters marvel at a wonderful food processor, and then in 1991 a wonderful microwave oven. NOM DE MON DE is the title of her 2011 book published in the “Trace(s)” series by Passage d’encres, in which every page focuses on questions of cadence, repetition, and variation with a different font and typographic design, and thus lends equal attention to form and content as well as the unspoken things that lie between the two.

While the artworks of Michel Verjux revolve around the idea of éclairage, or illumination, and theater spotlights are used to realize his impressive works, in Isabelle Lartault’s work language is always also a symbol for the projection of things onto words and words onto meanings. Empty spaces are just as significant as that which is spoken or written.

Both artists explore their interest in the altered perception of architecture and space as well as the status of language and the visual arts by addressing their core aspects, and both works are equally impressive for their intellectual clarity and their direct visual qualities and poetry: Correpondances.